Intelligent Community Energy

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The Intelligent Community Energy project (ICE) aims to design and implement innovative smart energy solutions for isolated territories in the Channel area. Islands and isolated communities are facing specific energy issues in terms of efficiency, reliability and sustainability, commonly due to the dependency on external energy supply and fossil fuel power generation, low electricity grid transmission capacity and limited or no connection to wider grids. This generally leads to above average carbon emissions, vulnerability to fluctuating fuel prices and/or supply disruption. In order to meet the needs of these territories, ICE aims to design and produce an innovative low-carbon energy system (smart grid, SG), able to significantly reduce the greenhouse gas emission of the territories concerned (50% to 100% compared to a fuel-based system). It will cover the entire energy cycle from production to consumption, exploit local renewable energy sources and integrate new and existing technologies currently at different levels of readiness (TRL 4 to 8), in order to deliver a comprehensive innovative solution (TRL8). These solutions will be implemented and tested on real pilot demonstration sites (Ushant island and the University of East Anglia’s campus), to validate their feasibility and develop a more generic and transferable methodology for the design and implementation of a local smart energy system adapted to isolated territories. The ICE project challenges: 1) Carry out case studies with the assessment of local energy conditions, exploitable renewable energy sources and appropriate technological solutions. 2) Design and implement SG pilot demonstrators in two communities of the Channel area, while adopting a market-oriented approach ensured by consumer and policy makers engagement. 3) Based on previous results, develop a business model canvas for isolated territories to help them identify appropriate low carbon transition patterns. In order to transfer this methodology to other isolated territories, ICE will ultimately deliver a comprehensive commercial offer to foster and guide their transition to a low carbon system. This will include a complete assessment of local resources and energy conditions, a tailored pattern for their energy transition and a set of competencies and appropriate low carbon technologies provided by a consortium of selected innovative companies. This ICE labeled business consortium will lead the offer, that will be promoted to other isolated areas both within and outside the Channel area (5 territories as first targets). The ICE partnership gathers together both research and business support organisations and will efficiently benefit from the complementarity between French and UK partners in terms of knowledge, technology and business development. The involvement of local and EU SMEs will further support their competitiveness and foster the transnational and European cooperation.

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